Since Mr. Rucksack and I will be married by a Justice of the Peace on the beach, we have a lot of leeway to be able to personalize our ceremony. And by we I mean I. I will be personalizing our ceremony. With a little input from Mr. Rucksack such as “No I don’t like that reading” and “Sure, I’ll list the things I love about you.”

We had one hell of a time finding someone to marry us—which, let me tell you, is absolutely the last thing I thought would be difficult. It’s one of those things I sort of took for granted. Originally, I assumed we would be married in a church. But after visiting several churches in our new town, Mr. Rucksack and I just didn’t find one that we really clicked with.

We then decided to have a good friend marry us, but quickly learned that Connecticut has strict rules on the people that can legally officiate a wedding.

We reached out to a few pastors and officiants in the area to find that they were either booked or away on vacation.

At some point, Mama Wallaby became a little critical that Mr. W and I hadn’t planned out our ceremony. Fair enough—we’d spent plenty of time talking escort cards, ice cream trucks, and reception playlists, but we hadn’t put onto paper any concrete ideas about how our ceremony would be conducted. So while Mama Wallaby was in town for a quick surprise visit in September, Mr. W and I sat down with her and his parents to discuss the ceremony deets.

Most of our ceremony would follow Protestant wedding tradition, but we planned to add a few Persian twists. Here’s the order we agreed to and presented to our officiant for his review:

Processional: The groom and best man will stand and look handsome under the oak tree, while the groomsmen, bridesmaids, maids of honor, flower girl, and ring bearer walk down the aisle (in that order). Last but not least, my dad will escort me down the aisle while I try my hardest not to sob uncontrollably.

The introduction: Our officiant will begin the ceremony by greeting all the guests.

Two readings: My uncle and cousin will read two passages from the Bible, or some other sweet words. Reading selections are TBD.

Giving away of the bride (and groom): Both Mr. W and I will be given away by our respective parents. The officiant will ask, “Who presents this woman and this man to be married to each other?” This is a Persian tradition too! Except in Iran, the officiant also asks the bride three times if she agrees to the marriage, and the third time she responds “yes!” (Apparently, making the groom wait for the bride’s answer signifies that the husband anxiously seeks the wife, and not vice versa.)

After realizing my dream readings didn’t really exist, I began to search for wedding readings that were non-religious; sadly they were not from my favorite literature and also did not have the witty sarcasm that many readings have. Through all of my searching, it became clear that no matter how I changed the wording in my Google search bar, the same readings kept coming up. Although this initially made it difficult to choose, I soon began to notice that some of my favorite of the seemingly slim pickings were from children’s literature.

Now if there is one area of our upbringing where Mr. B and I differ, it is our aptitude for reading. See, I LOVE reading. Once I get into a book, there is no going back, and more often than not, I’m done with it in a matter of hours. Mr. B , on the other hand, hasn’t so much as picked up a book in the four years we’ve been together. He just.doesn’t.enjoy.reading.

As I tend to do when requesting Mr. B ”˜s opinion on wedding-related issues, I chose my top three options (Mr. B always is a much a better contributor when not asked to just come up with ideas of his own accord) and let him choose from there. When I picked out the three options I would present him with, I figured he’d have absolutely no idea where they came from or why I picked them. But much to my surprise, he knew they were all from “kid’s books.” ( I promised him BONUS points for figuring it out!)

I had narrowed it down to three options, and was hoping he would pick his top two. Here our are top three:

When choosing what would be read at our wedding ceremony, there was only one REAL qualification: nothing religious. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but Mr. B and I are having (much to FMIL’s dismay) a completely non-denominational wedding. To me, if I include even slightly religious wedding readings, it defeats the purpose. Yes, I know that our wedding can be whatever we want it to be. But it is important to me to keep religion completely out of it. So when it came to choosing our readings, I knew I wanted to stay away from anything overtly religious. But there have got to be tons of awesome non-religious wedding readings, right? WRONG. At least I kept running into the same.darn.ones. EVERYWHERE! And the ones I found definitely offered some slim pickings”¦

As I was looking online through these readings, I was hoping to find a beautiful passage from one of my two favorite books: Gone with the Wind or Pride and Prejudice, you know, without having to re-read them (because I’m a busy bride and I definitely don’t have time for my favorite things, you know, like reading). Sadly, however, my searches were fruitless. I couldn’t find any passages suitable from GWTW, and could only find one from P&P, and it was (in my opinion) too short to fit the bill for what I consider a “reading”:

We’ve finally gotten around to writing our ceremony and, after almost a month of tweaking, I think we’ve got the meat of it done.

For probably 98% of it, I used readings and ceremony texts that already existed, but personalized them by mashing them together with other readings, changing the phrasing so it sounded more like “us,” adding my own words, and other such things. One reading that I used looked like this in its original form:

Treat yourselves and each other with respect, and remind yourselves often of what brought you together. Take responsibility for making the other feel safe, and give the highest priority to the tenderness, gentleness, and kindness that your connection deserves. When frustration, difficulty, and fear assail your relationship, as they threaten all relationships at some time or another, remember to focus on what is right between you, not only the part that seems wrong. In this way, you can survive the times when clouds drift across the face of the sun in your lives, remembering that, just because you may lose sight of it for a moment, does not mean the sun has gone away. And, if each of you takes responsibility for the quality of your life together, it will be marked by abundance and delight.

The line about not forgetting about the sun when there are clouds in front of it really struck a chord with me, but Mr. Wiz thought the phrasing was a little cheesy. I tried and tried to rephrase it myself, but couldn’t come up with something that still conveyed the same sentiment without the flowery language. Then one day, it hit me.

In our desire to DIY anything and everything we can, we’re also DIY’ing the ceremony. We’re marrying ourselves.

Wait, what?

I don’t mean that I am marrying me and Mr. Wizard is marrying Mr. Wizard (how weird would that be?)—I mean that we are saying vows and pronouncing ourselves married without an officiant to do so. This is something called a self-uniting wedding, and is only available in Pennsylvania, as it originates from the Pennsylvania Quaker tradition. It is just as legal as a “regular” wedding with an officiant, except that it requires a different marriage license. With a traditional license, the bride, groom, and two witnesses sign, and then to make it legal an ordained officiant signs. With a self-uniting license, all that is needed is the signatures of the bride, groom, and two witnesses—no officiant necessary!

In Pennsylvania there are three options for who you can have legally marry you: a judge/justice of the peace, a city or borough mayor, or a minister/priest/leader of any established religious congregation. As atheists, we knew we didn’t want a religious figure to marry us, so that was out. Having the mayor marry us just seemed…weird. And we didn’t really like the idea of a stranger coming and telling us we’re married just because they said so. One of our goals for the wedding, besides all the stylistic/visual stuff, is for everything, especially the ceremony, to be as personal as possible, and none of those three options fit that bill.

I feel like 90% of what I am referring to as wedding planning is really reception planning. Since Mr. Cannon and I are having a pretty traditional religious ceremony, there hasn’t been a lot of planning in that arena, and for that reason I hadn’t put a lot of thought into it. I mean, yes, I know we need to pick out a few Bible verses and things, but in many ways it feels like the ceremony is almost an afterthought in the context of everything else.

But while looking through the sample ceremonies and thinking about what is actually going to happen on our wedding day, it finally hit me. I am most likely going to cry at the wedding. I was getting teary eyed reading through the sample ceremonies in the parking lot of Pizza Hut. A lot of people say things like, “Don’t get too caught up in the wedding—it’s all about the marriage!” By which I believe they mean that the wedding planning and the party and whatnot are one day of the rest of your lives, so don’t put too much stock into it. That hasn’t been a problem for me because the marriage is really the important part in my mind. Mr. Cannon will be husband forever! I can’t wait!

But within all of that, I hadn’t really considered the enormity of the actual ceremony. Obviously, throughout our relationship we have had many promises and obligations to one another, but they have mostly been unsaid and merely implied. The wedding ceremony is my chance to vocalize those promises, and vow to uphold them for the rest of my life in front of God and everyone. It’s a powerful moment. It’s being decisive and making a choice and having the confidence to say how you feel and what you want. Honestly, as patriarchal as the history of marriage is, the ceremony feels like it will be a very feminist moment. It’s saying, “I have the choice to marry any man or no man, but I choose you.” And it’s not an inconsequential choice—it’s a lifelong commitment. It’s saying, “I’ve changed my mind about everything from my favorite color to my faith in God dozens of times over my short life, but I know I won’t change my mind about having you in it ever.” In every way, it really is a huge, powerful, important, emotional decision.

When looking for readings for our ceremony, we thought about borrowing a page from well-loved books from our childhood. Mr. PaC found two semi-suitable Shel Silverstein poems, but I nixed them since they felt more appropriate for a graduation speech or anniversary toast (“Listen to the Mustn’ts” and “The Folks Inside,” respectively).

I’ve searched the world over for wedding-day readings. I have read all umpteen pages over at Indie Bride. Most of the common wedding passages are just not our style, so…I wrote a few of my own.

I don’t know why I did this. Actually, I take that back. I know why I did it, but I don’t know why I’m sharing these on the Internet. I guess as a way to show you all that you can DIY your ceremony too. If there’s no reading that fits you…make one!

So, here is my first go at a reading for the ring exchange. I focused on what the ring meant to me—in one way, it means very little. It’s just a material object. But what it symbolizes means everything to me. Then I made it rhyme because I was feeling crazy.… read more